Akch! D@rn curators! Conservators want to know! There have been an endless number of times that I've been asked how an artist has made something and I have to take ages trying to tease out numbers of printings/colours and their techniques! The more information that comes into the museum with a work the easier it is to take care of it if something happens later... also easier for doing database entry/searches and any amount of other behind the scenes stuff
...ok rant over....
:) Lee.

>My "people" are interested in how the piece looks. I tell them about the
>work---almost everything I do has a story which is informative and interests
>the collector--- and editioning information.
>
>I have had it said by a Victoria and Albert Museum curator, "You don't have
>to tell us how you do it. We want it" That was certainly a boost to me
>in two ways.
>
>Carol Lyons
>Irvington, NY

Lee, yes I understand about conservators.
I also heard a curator, Diane Whye (who seems to move from museum to
museum), answer a question about the materials used in art. It was at one of
her lectures at the Print Exhibit in NY. She said that was not the job of
curators to be concerned about materials. They send the works to the
conservation department to take care of that..
( Not for me to negate what any curator says,especially when my work is
being acquired!. )
Interesting, when certain of my art was being viewed at MOMA, I was asked
to sit outside the room. I found out that the curator was describing the
technique I used to the assistant and she was all wrong about it. If I had
been asked I certainly would have told!.
If anything can happen it will happen!
Best to you
Carol

Editions : for what it is worth my editions are between 5 and 14 except for
Baren exchange editions of 31. The editions are without the 'rejects' which
are recycled or named as trial or artists proofs if I wish to own them.

The latest updated print of Woden is actually a 'reject' because the master
line block has misprinted, but it gives an extra dynamic to the horse.

At the end of a formal edition I score the block and print it to prove it is
a limited edition. These days it is a rare event as my usual print method is
reduction and, of course, one of the reason why I have such small editions!

With the end of the 'My Solitudes' project now in sight (although still months away), it's time to stop procrastinating about the 'exhibition' question. Those of you who have been following my work for some time know that there has been a 'disruption' in my long-established exhibition pattern in the last couple of years.

For 19 years I held an annual exhibition every January, but the last few of those were all 'less than successful', and rather than continue pouring money down a black hole (exhibitions here in Tokyo are expensive!) I decided to stop for a while. This made sense from another angle too, as the Solitudes project was clearly going to take a few years, and it seemed logical to wait until completion before showing it. So I just put 'exhibitions' out of my mind ...

But here we are ... with the series coming to an end, there is a decision to be made - have a show, or just hunker down and save my pennies for food?

Before I could make a sensible decision, I needed some data; it was time to get on the train. So one day late last year I printed out a listing of galleries in the Ginza area of Tokyo, along with their rental rates, and headed out to do some scouting. It didn't take long to learn that things are really in flux: around a quarter of them were gone. Shuttered. And my list wasn't all that old. The recession is obviously pounding those places hard.

I wasn't sure whether this was good news, or bad. With far fewer places available, would this make it more difficult to find available space in one of the remaining ones? It turned out - after making inquiries at a few places that seemed suitable (size / price) - that far from being booked up, most places had a calendar full of holes, something that was completely inconceivable just a couple of years ago. In the days when I was booking my annual exhibition in Shinkuku every year for example, I had to put my name down for the week I wanted as far as two years in advance. It seems those days are gone.

Anyway, long story short, after plenty of walking around and looking at available spaces, I settled on one, and - after a bit of 'discussion' - negotiated what I thought was a good rate, . . .
[Long item has been trimmed at this point. The full blog entry can be viewed here]

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